Rivers Run Through Them: Landscapes in Environmental History

The American Society for Environmental History and Forest History Society Program Committee is pleased to welcome you to St. Paul, and to present "Rivers Run Through Them: Landscapes in Environmental History." Last winter we issued a call for papers and posters investigating not only landscapes in environmental history, but also the role of water in defining those landscapes. We were honored and impressed by the wealth of proposals, diverse, creative, and strikingly international. After all, if you follow a river long enough, you will come to a confluence. This conference will be a true intellectual confluence. Scholars will present work on landscapes from Africa to Israel to Florida to Australia, and rivers from the Amazon to the Elwha to the Hudson to the Mississippi. This work will be presented by historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, political scientists, geographers, city planners, and ecologists Forest historians will travel from Southeast Asia to Finland to Maine to Michigan. In other sessions we will visit L.A.'s beaches, Ted Turner's ranches, Canada's uranium mines, and Korea's DMZ. Overall, the conference offers 80 panels and over 20 posters. The plenary session on environmental journalism will bring together three Pulitzer Prize winners, including Mark Schleifstein of New Orleans Times-Picayune. Writer Scott Russell Sanders will offer the keynote address, entitled, "Defining and Defending the Common Wealth." Other events will include a range of tours and breakfasts to offer participants both a broader view of the local landscape, as well as further opportunity to interact with colleagues from all over the world.

Kathryn Morse, Program Committee Chair, Middlebury College

Program

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Field Trips

The following is a preliminary list:

Field Trip #1: Mill City Museum & National Center for the Study of Earth Surface Dynamics

Employing the waterpower supplied by the Mississippi River's only major waterfall, Minneapolis became a lumber and flour milling center. From 1880 to 1930, Minneapolis led the nation and at times the world in flour production. Housed in the burned out ruins of the Washburn A Mill, the new Mill City interprets this history. For more information, see www.millcitymuseum.org

The tour will continue across James J. Hill's Stone Arch Bridge. Built between 1882 and 1883 to link the wheat fields of western Minnesota and the Dakotas to flour mills on the east bank, this National Engineering Landmark is the only bridge of its kind on the Mississippi. Standing on the bridge offers the best views of St. Anthony Falls and of the Mississippi?s upper most and highest lock and dam.

The tour ends at the University of Minnesota's St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, on Hennepin Island, which houses the National Center for the Study of Earth Surface Dynamics. In 2002 the University of Minnesota and the Science Museum of Minnesota received a $16.5 million grant to study the processes that have shaped the earth?s surface. Researchers from around the world are working at the St. Anthony lab to develop large scale landscape models. For more information, see www.nced.umn.edu

Field Trip #2 The Twin Cities Metro Mississippi River

No where else along its entire length does the Mississippi River change so dramatically in such a short reach. Immediately above St. Anthony Falls, in the heart of Minneapolis, the prairie river begins. Here the land runs up to the river with low banks, allowing industry and private homes to build to the river?s edge. Below St. Anthony the Mississippi drops into an 8.5-mile gorge, falling over 110 feet through three locks and dams. Then, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, the Mississippi becomes the large floodplain river most people know. The three rivers are physically and ecologically different, and each faces unique development pressures and ecosystem restoration challenges.

This tour will begin at St. Anthony Falls, travel down the gorge, with a stops at the ruins of the Mississippi?s first lock and dam and a visit to Lock and Dam No. 1. We will continue to Fort Snelling and the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. In St. Paul we will take in the vista from the bluff at Indian Mounds Park and then descend to valley floor and the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, recently restored from a railroad yard. For the entire tour you will be in the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a 72-mile long unit of the National Park Service. For more information, see www.nps.gov/miss

Field Trip #3: Urban Sprawl

This field trip would take visitors on an ecological tour of sprawl and its consequences east of the Twin cities. The trip will take participants to several sites linking community development with environmental protection through open space protection, smart-growth strategies, and innovative transportation solutions.

Jackson Meadow will be a featured site. Harold Teasdale, president of Minnesota Brokerage Group and a board member of Great River Greening, developed the award-winning Jackson Meadow community in Marine on St. Croix. His goals here were to create a community and preserve the environment. The concept involves clustering 64 homes on about 40 acres of land leaving 250 acres undeveloped open space or woodland. For more information, see http://www.mnland.org/cdp-jmeadow.pdf

The Green Institute originated from an environmental justice movement against the siting of a solid waste transfer station in a low-income, minority residential area of South Minneapolis' Phillips Neighborhood. In 1993, after 12 years of resistance, neighborhood residents, having succeeded in preventing construction of the large facility, formed the Green Institute. Program operations began in 1995 with the opening of the ReUse Center, a retail store providing quality salvaged building materials. In 1997, the Institute formed DeConstruction Services, a project intended to aggressively procure and market used building materials. In 1998, the Institute broke ground for a major commercial center on the land once slated for the transfer station. The Phillips Eco-Enterprise Center opened in Fall 1999 and is now home to many environmental industry firms and several non-profit organizations including the Green Institute. For more information, go to http://www.greeninstitute.org

Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota (EJAM) is a Minneapolis-based organization that works to clean up abandoned toxic and hazardous waste sites located in or near to residential neighborhoods. The mission of the organization is to work towards the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of communities of color and low-income communities in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulation, and policies for the purpose of eliminating minority health disparities. For more information, go to www.ejadvocates-mn.us

The Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge is one of only four urban refuges in the nation. Coyotes, bald eagles, badgers, beavers, and many other species live next door to three million people. The refuge covers 12,500 acres, along 34 miles of the Minnesota River. Refuge habitats include riverine wetlands, fens, seeps, floodplain forests, oak savannas, forest, and native grasslands. One of the primary tributaries to the Mississippi River flyway, over 200 species of birds use the refuge. For more information, see http://www.fws.gov/Midwest/MinnesotaValley

Under construction. The Mall of America is the nation?s largest retail and entertainment complex. While it is the epitome of American consumerism, the Mall does employ some green qualities. For more information, see http://www.mallofamerica.com

Special Events

The St. Paul conference will include several receptions, two banquets, and a plenary session. An evening at the Science Museum of Minnesota is also planned.

Mississippi at St Paul.
Photo courtesy: John Anfinson, National Park Service